‘Why Can’t He Be Our President?’ asks headline on the magazine

“Wanna see our pictures on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for our mothers…
Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the Rollin’ Stone.”

– Lyrics from the Dr. Hook song, Cover of the Rolling Stone.

The very first issue of Rolling Stone magazine, published 50 years ago this year, featured Beatle John Lennon on its cover.

Since then, the magazine’s cover has cameod every mega star in music from Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Adele, a gala of Hollywood actors and almost every U.S. president going back to Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.

But never a Canadian prime minister, at least up to now.

Could you ever see Stephen Harper on the cover of the Rolling Stone? I’d have to smoke more pot in a day than the late, great gonzo journalist for the magazine, Hunter S. Thompson, ever smoked in a month to imagine that. And I don’t smoke pot, so that’s never going to happen.

But now, just hitting the shelves late this July, there is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the cover with a caption reading; ‘Why can’t he be our president?’

I heard a few American reporters asking the same question when I joined them in a press scrum this past June where Trudeau was in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a brief event, celebrating World Environment Day and where, by the way, Trudeau vowed to keep Canada working with other nations around the world to fulfill the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement, despite the current American administration’s decision to give it a pass.

By the way, the new issue of Rolling Stone – the one featuring Canada’s PM on the cover – also features an article titled; “How the Trump Administration is Destroying the EPA,” as in Environmental Protection Agency. As the Twitter-in-Chief himself might say – ‘Sad!’

Must be another sign of our times in the era of Trump.

Below is a recent artist’s depiction of Trump on a Rolling Stone cover published earlier this year.

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“A politician thinks of the next election. A leader thinks of the next generation.” – Bernie Sanders